So I decided to participate in a fellow blogger NerdExp's challenge, and write about a character in media who uses his brain over his brawn; a character that's not built to be one of the chess pieces, but instead is the player himself. After thinking about it, there's one pretty well known character that comes to mind.

Lelouch Lamperouge

*WARNING: SIGNIFICANT SPOILERS ARE AHEAD FOR CODE GEASS SEASON ONE*

Geass: a type of psychic power that manifests itself differently in each separate individual. Lelouch's power is the ability is make an individual do whatever he says. The catch is, it cannot be used on the same person twice. The day Lelouch received this power, he massacred a Britannian squad with it.

When you think about Lelouch's army The Order of the Black Knights and the battles he fought with them, each and every fight ends up like a game of chess. Lelouch uses his pieces and orders them at will, going into certain spots, ambushing foes and coming up with battle strategies. One on one fights with a KnightMare? He almost certainly ends up losing. Even in the battle with Cornelia near the end of the first season, his Gawain was not able to outmaneuver her. Instead, it was the appearance of Darlton, who under that influence of his Geass, that saved him.

In the Battle of Narita, Lelouch uses a bomb that releases radiation waves and causes a gigantic landslide taking out half the KnightMares being used by Cornelia. In the end, however, he is chased down by the Lancelot and almost captured, if it were not for C.C.'s help. When he wanted to save C.C. from Mao, he used tricks like recording and taking advantage of Mao's Geass. Even when Mao took his sister captive, he used Kuruguri as a chess piece, one that captures brawn, in order to save her, going as far as using Geass on himself. He is the perfect example of mind over matter, and brains over brawn.